Benny Andersson, one of the four members of ABBA, reacted on his second Eurovision Song Contest victory. It's the first and, so far, only ABBA member who reacted on last night's Congratulations result. Waterloo, ABBA's 1974 winner, won the title of all-time favorite Eurovision Song Contest entry.
Critical fans
“It's nice we won, although I haven't seen the show. I don't really like these kinds of gala's”, Andersson said to a journalist of the Swedish newspaper Expressen. Eurovision Song Contest fans are generally critical about the fact that none of the ABBA members was present in Copenhagen's Forum, last night. “At least one of them should have been there, at the 50th anniversary of the event that started their multi-million dollar carreer”, a fan said.
One billion dollars
Since ABBA split up in 1982, the group never had a come-back. In 2000, ABBA turned down one billion dollars for a come-back. “It is a hell of a lot of money to say no to, but we decided it wasn't for us”, Benny Andersson said back then. “We have never made a comeback. Almost everyone else has. I think there is a message in that”, he added.
The offer is believed to have come from an American-British consortium which wanted the Swedish group to get back together for 100 concerts to cash in on the international ABBA revival.
'It's over'
“It was great fun back in 1974, but we split up in 1982. It's over now, really”, Andersson said. Last night's award was handed out to an unknown man, who was said to be the son of one of the ABBA members. Others claim to know the man represented record label Universal.
Update: The award was handed out to Mårten Aglander of record label Universal. Newspaper Aftonbladet wrote that.
